State v. Cupit
| Decision Date | 07 March 1938 |
| Docket Number | 34737 |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE v. CUPIT |
Appeal from Sixth Judicial District Court, Parish of Madison; Frank Voelker, Judge.
Joe Cupit was convicted of assault with intent to commit rape and he appeals.
Affirmed.
Harry K. Murray, of Vicksburg, Miss., for appellant.
Gaston L. Porterie, Atty. Gen., James O'Connor, Asst. Atty Gen., and Jeff B. Snyder, Dist. Atty., of Tallulah, and Philip Watson, Asst. Dist. Atty., of St. Joseph, for the State.
The defendant, Joe Cupit, was convicted on a charge of assault with intent to commit rape, and was sentenced to imprisonment in the penitentiary for a term of three to six years. Defendant appeals. His complaint is that the trial judge erred in admitting, over his objection, certain testimony offered by the State as showing, or as tending to show, the particular criminal intent necessary to constitute the crime charged.
The record discloses that the fourteen year old girl whom defendant is charged with assaulting with intent to commit rape is defendant's niece, his sister's child; that defendant had raped her sister, another niece, some years before this attempt; and that defendant had been arrested in the parish of West Carroll, on affidavit of the husband of another of defendant's sisters, on the charge of having raped her small daughter, another of defendant's nieces. All the parties involved in the case are white people of the tenant farmer class.
The prosecutrix testified that her uncle, the defendant, came to her mother's home on the Tensas river, in a thinly settled section of the parish, about noon on Sunday, and inquired for her mother, his sister; that the witness, who had been left in charge of the home and three younger children, told him her mother had gone to a house some two miles distant for the purpose of going to work the next morning and would not return home until Monday evening. That the defendant left the place but returned some time after midnight, broke in the door, which was fastened with only a latch string, caught her by the shoulder, pulled her towards him and said: "I am going to sleep with you tonight." That she broke away from him and ran into another room, and that defendant repeatedly called to her "to come back here" and finally declared, "I am coming after you." The prosecutrix then ran out of the house, down to the Tensas river, got in a skiff, crossed the river about 2 o'clock in the morning, ran to a neighbor's home about 200 yards away, and told him what had happened. The neighbor accompanied the prosecutrix to her home, and when they arrived there, the defendant, Cupit, went away.
After this testimony was given, the district attorney asked the witness whether her sister, naming her, had ever told her what their Uncle Joe Cupit had done to her some years before the alleged offense of defendant. The question was objected to, on the ground that it was irrelevant and the time too remote. The court overruled the objection, and the witness testified that she had been told by her sister, naming her, that Joe Cupit, the defendant had raped her, the sister, eight years before, and that her sister had told her about this about two or three years before the trial in this case.
The sister in question, now nineteen years old, testified that in the year 1927 her Uncle Joe Cupit, the defendant, had raped her, she being then about eleven years of age, and that she had told her sister, the prosecutrix, about the matter about two or three years ago. This testimony was admitted over defendant's objection that defendant never had been convicted of or charged with this separate offense, and that testimony of a remote and unrelated crime was inadmissible.
It further appears from the record that Joe Cupit, the defendant, on cross-examination, admitted without objection that about two years previously he had been arrested in West Carroll parish on a charge of having raped another niece and giving her "a bad disease." However, Cupit was subsequently released without any further action being taken in the case.
As a general rule, it is incompetent for the State, in a criminal prosecution, to prove that the defendant at some other time committed an offense similar to the one with which he stands charged. This rule, however, is subject to certain exceptions. One of the exceptions is where it is necessary for the State to show guilty knowledge and the intent and purpose with which the particular act was done.
Evidence of similar and independent crimes is often relative to show the presence of some specific intent. Underhill's Crim. Ev., 4th Ed., § 350, p. 521.
Evidence of other crimes similar to that charged is relevant and admissible when it shows or tends to show a particular...
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